


One More

by sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Threesome - F/F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6095397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adaar has a confession to make about Leliana's new agent. Josephine—also has a confession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alphabetiful](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphabetiful/gifts).



> For Bet, who did me a solid. If this was m/m/m, I'd title it "The Dick of the Magi" (no, I wouldn't, but I'd consider it).

She'd had to bribe Sera with two jars of jam and some weird skulls to show to Dagna to get her to cause enough havoc to get Josephine's notice. Adaar wasn't too concerned about the details. Something about a duke. Something about a sitting room. It'd be smoothed over by the time it came to her attention, anyway.

Adaar didn't like going to Leliana with requests about her and Josephine, but sometimes, it was unavoidable.

"The new agent you hired," Adaar said to Leliana, once their business was concluded. "Get rid of her. You don't need any more agents. Cullen, all your new agents are fired, too." 

"Admiral Isabela has five fast ships under her command, innumerable able-bodied seamen, and a fearsome reputation to bring to the Inquisition," said Leliana, under the sound of Cullen's complaint. "And a two-year contract. On what grounds would you have me turn her off, Inquisitor?" 

"I…" 

"You?" 

"We've met before." 

"I imagine a sea captain's travels take her far and wide."

"No, we've _met_ before." 

"I'll go," Cullen said hastily. "I have a meeting. Do whatever you like about my agents. If you'll all excuse me—"

"Stay," said Leliana, and he stayed put. Adaar was going to have to learn that trick someday. "You've _met_ the admiral. I see." 

Leliana was pious, terrifying, a steadfast friend, mostly to Josephine, and an enormous asshole. Adaar made the relevant hand gesture. And the other relevant hand gesture, and yet another one that made Cullen cock his head in confusion, and Leliana nod along in agreement. 

"The Valo-Kas were passing through Kirkwall," Adaar said. "Not a friendly place for Tal-Vashoth. This brothel, up in the fancy part of the city, was the one place that would put us up for the night, provided the madam got a night with Shokrakar. Good bargain, all told. Anyway, I met some Rivaini there, and." Another gesture, which both of them got right away. 

Leliana shrugged. "She isn't the type to wreak havoc in one's new relationship, if that's what you're concerned about. Why—I passed some time in her company, as well. Many, many years ago."

That wasn't surprising. If you looked hard enough, past all the Blight stuff, and all the Left Hand stuff, you could tell she'd lived a wild life, before she was the Nightingale. The little smirk when someone's underwear got nailed to the Chantry board. The baffling amount of what she discreetly called "incendiary liquids" in the rookery. The frequency with which raven shit ended up on the other end of Skyhold, when someone pissed her off. But if two of them in the room had bedded down with the same person, which only left— 

"Cullen?" Adaar asked.

" _No_ ," he said. "Captain, ah, Manon is waiting for me, please, Inquisitor." 

Did they even have a Captain Manon? Adaar would look it up later.

"You lived in Kirkwall for ten years," Leliana said, "and you knew Hawke and her—group of ruffians." 

"That's hardly a fair assumption about the admiral's person, and I would hardly say I was _acquainted_ with them," Cullen said. A beat. He scratched the back of his neck. "She shoved me off the end of a pier once." 

"Well, that settles it, then," Leliana said. "The admiral stays on."

Still. Honesty was the best policy.

Josephine wasn't holding court in her office. She wasn't hustling nobles out in the great hall, she wasn't out at the archery range, making soldiers accidentally fall in love her, she wasn't in the Undercroft, smoothing over Dagna and Harritt's latest spat, she wasn't down in the vault, rolling in all their gold (in any event, Adaar had only caught Josie doing it once, and would never let her live it down), and she wasn't with Dorian, Vivienne, or the Iron Bull, which left one possibility.

She found Josephine pacing the balcony in the Inquisitor's suite. 

"I have something to tell you," Josephine said, after a deep breath. 

_This is it,_ Adaar thought, her heart in her throat. _She's done with me._

There was no reason to think that. Whenever Adaar brought it up, Josie said the rumors of their connection could hang, which was as near she ever got to saying, _Anyone who runs their mouth can go fuck themselves up a tree._

Best to go out with a joke, though, if this was the end. 

"I didn't get you pregnant," Adaar said. She reached down to feel at Josephine's stomach. "Did I? Shit. I'm not ready to be a parent. We'll have to call Shokrakar back from wherever Cullen sent her, to do the traditional blessing. You're going to need to get two gourds and a string of amber beads, and I don't know where we're going to get gourds up in the mountains. Kaariss isn't just going to write a poem, he's going to write a _song cycle._ " 

Josephine laughed, her nervous, high-pitched laugh—she'd met Kaariss—and pushed Adaar's hand away. "Stop. I'm being serious. You must understand, my love--this was all well before we met. I attended a tiresome party at Chateau Haine, far in the mountains of Orlais—imagine the Winter Palace, but without the grand intrigues. It was horrible. Bad cheese. Insolent servants. A staged wyvern hunt. All to gain a signature on… a trade agreement. I don't want to bore you."

"You never bore me," said Adaar, taking her by the shoulders and steering her back into the room. She'd come all the way up here without a cloak or a coat. There had been a point in her life where she'd never have thought about _caring_ about a human—they saw Vashoth as objects for one-night funsies, so that was how she'd seen them.

And then Josie had said, _Panahedan, Herald,_ before Adaar left on a mission. 

_You've been studying qunlat,_ Adaar had said. 

_I'm sure it's not your tongue,_ Josie had replied. _But you must have a mother, or grandmother, who spoke it to you. We have a dictionary, you see. It's not complete, and some of it is spurious, to say the least, but it's all I have to study, in order to know you better._

Adaar had been taken aback. If she had to pick a moment where she'd fallen in love with Josephine Montilyet, that was the one. _You could always just, you know. Talk to me,_ she'd said, and shouldered her pack, and spent the rest of her trip to the Hinterlands thinking about what she was going to say to the ambassador when she got back.

"Go on," Adaar said, in the here and now, wrapping a blanket around Josephine's shoulders and tucking it firmly in around her toes.

"Some Ferelden," Josephine said, in the universal disdain-for-Fereldens tone of voice, "brought a woman claiming to be a Rivaini pirate captain along as her guest, and I was restless, and thought I'd never see her again, you see. She was so impeccably discreet that I never even heard her slip into my chambers after I invited her, let alone learned her name; and there was a bit of unpleasantness at the end of the party, so I never got the chance to ask."

 _A bit of unpleasantness,_ in Josephine-speak, could either mean "I was sent beige upholstery for these cushions when I specifically requested _taupe_ ," or "murder." There was no in-between. Either way, Adaar got the picture. 

"So, let me guess," she said. "Leliana just hired her to work for us?" 

"Yes," Josephine said, throwing her tiny hands up in the air. "It's mortifying. I recognized her at once. She winked at me—winked!"

Adaar caught them, enfolded them in her own. "It's all right, Josie. I've met her, too." 

"Yes, but I've _met_ her." 

"No, I mean." Adaar made the same gesture she'd made at Leliana earlier, and then the other three gestures, and watched Josephine's eyes go wide as saucers, at the last one. "Met her." 

"Ah."

"Well, now we know," said Adaar. "We either never speak of it again, or we tell each other every juicy detail."

"There is a third possibility," Josephine murmured. 

"I'm not seeing it," Adaar said. 

"Rank has its privileges. I would never think to abuse those privileges, of course, nor would you. But they do leave one a certain amount of leeway for… private liaisons, Inquisitor. A certain freedom of movement."

Josie slipped back into calling her _Inquisitor_ when she was feeling frisky. It was probably some kind of fantasy, but Adaar hadn't been able to figure out which kind: imperious noblewoman and humble soldier who needed passage through her lands, so to speak, or naughty functionary looking for a favor from the great Herald of Andraste? She'd get around to asking, someday. 

"Say no more, Ambassador," said Adaar. "I'll take care of it." 

*

The runner found Isabela down at the Herald's Rest, where Varric's little elf friend was staring at her tits, and Varric's enormous qunari friend was doing the same. Sera and the Iron Bull. Varric had left her to them, or them to her. There was no question of her taking one of them back to her quarters tonight—she'd even consider both, if they didn't seem so much like siblings—and she'd caught them betting, earlier, on which of them it would be. 

"Summons, ma'am," the girl said. "Lady Montilyet's office, ten minutes, if you'd be so kind." 

Sera and the Bull winced in unison. "Better head up there," the Bull said. "When the ambassador calls, you go." 

"Or come," Sera said, under her breath, which was still loud enough for Isabela to hear over the din of the tavern. 

Neither of them could possibly know. Isabela had recognized the beautiful, famous Lady Montilyet on sight—she'd been the only good part of Hawke's trip to Orlais, or at least the only part that hadn't been actively trying to kill her—but she'd barely recognized the qunari mercenary she'd met at the Blooming Rose as the Herald of Andraste.

They were both waiting for her, in the ambassador's office. 

Lady Montilyet was seated at her desk. The Herald was standing behind her chair, like a captain guarding her queen. They were both ridiculously good-looking, in diametrically opposite ways, and both of them were dressed in clothing that looked very, very easy to remove. She didn't have to be a character in one of Varric's novels to solve _this_ mystery.

"Admiral," Lady Montilyet said. 

"Lady Ambassador. Your Worship," said Isabela, doffing her hat and making a grand bow. If she'd known what exalted company she was going to be in, she would have brought a bigger hat, with a bigger plume. The two of them exchanged a glance, as she straightened back up, and—it seemed her night wasn't ruined after all. "How may I be of service to you?"


End file.
